The San Diego Padres' ongoing quest for a World Series (or at least a playoff title). "You know that many runners enter a race, but only one of them wins the prize. So run to win! Athletes work hard to win a crown that cannot last, but we do it for a crown that will last forever." 1 Corinthians 9:24-25

Opening Up and Down

Well, that wasn’t what we hoped for.

In the very first game of the season, with all these expectations and hopes riding on them, the Padres played a really bad game.

I guess it wasn’t really all their fault. After all, Dan Haren was completely dominant. So, what went wrong?

First of all, Jon Garland was not that sharp. He allowed two runs in the bottom of the first, plus he threw about 30 pitches in that one inning alone. It was not good. You could just tell that it was going to be a loooong game from the start. As we all know, if you don’t have good pitching, you don’t win. And yesterday, Garland was just not on top of things.

Second, our defense was blundering all over the place. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! This was not the team we’ve been watching all spring. This game makes me want to cry! There’s one statement I can make that describes how bad our defense was yesterday: Jon Garland allowed six runs – only two were earned.

Isn’t that awful? I mean, ugh. Awful awful awful. But unfortunately, that’s not the end of it. A couple of those runs came on a two-run inside the park home run by Justin Upton. The outfield looked completely helpless. They were running around, trying to get the ball, and they couldn’t even get a throw into the outfield. I hate seeing my boys so helpless like that. It was horrible.

There were quite a few positives, though. Adrian Gonzalez had two hits, a double and his first home run of the season. Chase Headley also had two hits. Kyle Blanks had our other hit. pades.com points out something pretty sad: “And those go-go Padres, who were a hit in Spring Training with their assertiveness on the bases? It’s hard to steal first base, as the joke goes. The Padres had three baserunners in the first eight innings.”

ARGH!!!

Okay, I know that it’s only the first game of the season, and we’ve got a looooong way to go. But we made a lot of stupid mistakes yesterday, and we shouldn’t have. It always stinks to lose, but especially on Opening Day.

But we did fight back. In the bottom of the ninth with two outs, Adrian Gonzalez and Kyle Blanks hit back-to-back homers. That was good. But too short.

It’s too bad that it had to happen on Opening Day, but this is one of the games that you have to forget. I remember last year on Opening Day Jake Peavy started and was not good at all. We lost the game 4-1 against the Dodgers. I was not happy about that at all, but I had to put it behind me and just look forward to the next game. So that’s what I’m going to do today. We’ve got Chris Young going for us, and we’re not going against Dan Haren. Things are looking better already.

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